How was your Valentine's Day? Tanner and I went out to a fancy restaurant for dinner, whereupon we realized that we are not fancy restaurant people. The waiter kept recommending different kinds of wines, expensive dishes, and sweet desserts, but we stuck with our glasses of water and pasta dishes and decided that next year we're going to find a quaint country diner, order a big apple pie, and call it even.

When we got home I decided to make a batch of our own dessert in the spirit of the holiday: red velvet crinkle cookies. Tanner admitted that he doesn't like red velvet, but I was set on making red heart cookies, so I went for it, anyway.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. I was out of parchment paper and simply sprayed the pan with oil, which I later learned was not a good life choice.

In a large bowl, combine cake mix, flour, eggs, oil and vanilla extract. Mix until smooth.

Scoop a spoonful of cookie dough and form into a ball. Roll the ball in powdered sugar until fully coated. Place cookie dough balls on prepared baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes, or until edges are set and cookies begin to crack.

Or so the recipe says. It was at this point that I realized that only 6 minutes had passed and the house started to smell like burnt cookie. I yanked the pan out of the oven at the same time the fire alarm went off. Unfortunately, my poor cookies were still gooey on top and almost black on the bottom. I scraped them off the pan and put them on a cutting board to cool, rather dejected.

I let them sit for a minute and then decided to cut them into hearts, anyway. I didn't have a heart cookie cutter, so I used a knife to chop off the edges into rough heart-like shapes. (Poor little burnt lop-sided heart cookies...)

As it turns out, Tanner tasted one of them and decided that his new favorite flavor is gooey-burnt red velvet. So we shared our plate of Charlie Brown heart cookies and decided that next year I'll buy some parchment paper.